Visual Glossary of Japanese Fashion

Fashion has a vocabulary, and Japanese fashion has more than most: terms borrowed from American campuses, coined on Tokyo pavements, or inherited from the kimono workshop. This glossary pairs the words with photographs from the archive, so that a term can be matched to a garment at a glance. Every photograph leads to its collection. For essays, return to The Fashionista Bible.

Souvenir and stadium jackets

The delinquent uniform

For the history of the long coat, the dabo shirt and the tokkofuku, read Bosozoku and Yanki Style.

Wagara on shirts and denim

Flight jackets

Denim marks

Kimono remade

Riders and collaborations

Ivy, Americana and the Shibuya schools

• Amekaji. A contraction of ‘American casual’: the Japanese practice of wearing, and then reproducing, American clothing. Accounts differ on whether it or shibukaji came first. Guide
• Ametora. ‘American traditional’, the Ivy lineage of the 1960s; also the title of W. David Marx’s 2015 book. Essay
• Ivy and trad. The button-down shirt, the navy blazer and the loafer, taught to Japanese students by VAN and by Men’s Club magazine.
• VAN. Kensuke Ishizu’s company: a shop in Osaka in 1951, the VAN brand in 1954, bankruptcy in 1978. History
• Take Ivy. The 1965 photobook by Teruyoshi Hayashida, with text by Shosuke Ishizu, Toshiyuki Kurosu and Hajime Hasegawa, reissued by powerHouse in 2010.
• Miyuki-zoku. Teenagers in VAN paper bags on Ginza’s Miyuki-dori in the summer of 1964, cleared away by police that September before the Olympics.
• Heavy Duty. The 1970s Men’s Club term for an outdoor, rugged version of Ivy.
• Shibukaji. ‘Shibuya casual’: the Center Gai teams of the mid-1980s, which went national through magazines in 1989 and split around 1990.
• Kirekaji. The cleaner, Ivy-leaning branch of Shibuya casual after that split; the biker-leaning branch was called hard amekaji.
• Select shop. A retailer that edits other labels’ goods to a single taste: Beams (1976), United Arrows (1989), SHIPS, Nepenthes. Directory
• Reproduction. A faithful remake of an American original by a Japanese maker, such as Buzz Rickson’s or The Real McCoy’s.
• Loopwheel. A slow circular knitting method that makes sweatshirt cloth without side seams.

Street tribes and pop

• Taiyozoku. The ‘sun tribe’ of rebellious postwar youth, from Shintaro Ishihara’s 1955 novel and the films of 1956.
• Takenoko-zoku. Harajuku street dancers in bright harem costume, named for the Boutique Takenoko of 1978; the Sunday pedestrian zone ended on 31 August 1998. Timeline
• Roller-zoku. Rockabilly dancers of Yoyogi and Harajuku who used the name themselves.
• DC brand. ‘Designer’s and Character’s’ labels of the boom that ran from about 1980 to 1987 and peaked in 1986; the term has no firm definition.
• Ura-Harajuku. The back streets of Jingumae where small shops opened in the 1990s: Goodenough in 1990, Nowhere in 1993. Essay
• Shibuya-kei. The Shibuya record-shop music scene; the term appeared in promotion around 1993.
• Gyaru, kogal, ganguro, yamanba. The girl cultures of the 1990s, with Egg magazine from 1995; ganguro peaked around 2000 and yamanba is its extreme form.
• FRUiTS. Shoichi Aoki’s Harajuku street-snap magazine, June 1997 to February 2017, 233 issues.
• Lolita. A frilled, Victorian-inflected style carried by labels such as Milk (1970), Angelic Pretty (1979) and Baby, the Stars Shine Bright (1988).
• Visual kei. Rock bands defined by elaborate dress, from X Japan onward; accounts date its beginning to the early or mid-1980s.
• Decora. Layers of toys and accessories, dated only to the late 1990s and early 2000s.
• Superflat. Takashi Murakami’s 2000 exhibition and idea; his Louis Vuitton Multicolore monogram reached the runway for spring/summer 2003. Murakami
• Cool Japan. Douglas McGray’s 2002 phrase ‘Japan’s Gross National Cool’, later a government programme: an office in 2010 and a fund in 2013.
• Techwear. Technical outerwear worn as streetwear; Goldwin, the Japanese distributor of The North Face, is a frequent reference.

Cloth and craft

• Selvedge. Denim woven on a shuttle loom with a self-finished edge, visible when the hem is turned up. Kojima and Okayama
• Unsanforised. Cloth not pre-shrunk, which fades with greater contrast.
• Atari and hige. The Japanese words for the fades at the knee and the whiskers at the hip.
• Kamome. The seagull painted on the back pockets of Evisu jeans, the label’s best-known mark.
• Aizome. Dyeing with natural indigo, the colour Japan associates with workwear and with the Kojima mills.
• Boro. Patched and re-patched textile made from worn cloth; the root of Kapital’s patchwork. Kapital
• Sashiko. Running-stitch reinforcement, used for strength and for pattern.
• Shibori. Resist dyeing by tying, binding or folding cloth.
• Obi. The sash of the kimono, often woven in brocade, now cut into jackets and bags. Kimono glossary
• Kimono remake. Garments rebuilt from kimono and obi cloth, from aloha shirts to bombers.

Pattern and symbol

• Seigaiha. Overlapping arcs for waves.
• Asanoha. The hemp-leaf star, a symbol of growth.
• Kikkō. The tortoise-shell hexagon, for long life.
• Shippō. Interlocking circles, ‘seven treasures’.
• Karakusa. The scrolling arabesque of vine.
• Koi. The carp that swims upstream: perseverance.
• Ryū and tora. Dragon and tiger, a standard pairing on sukajan.
• Hōō. The phoenix.
• Tsuru and kame. Crane and turtle, for long life.
• Daruma. The roly-poly doll of perseverance, painted eyes and all.
• Hannya. The female demon mask of Nō theatre.
• Fūjin and Raijin. The gods of wind and thunder.
• Gosho-guruma. The imperial court carriage, a classic kimono motif.

The full pattern guide is Wagara Patterns Explained.

Designer vocabulary

• Deconstruction. Seams, linings and hems shown or removed; the idiom Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto brought to Paris in 1981. Essay
• Hiroshima chic. A critics’ label for early black, torn Japanese clothes; accounts date it differently and the coiner is unproven.
• Lumps and bumps. The nickname of Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body, spring/summer 1997.
• AD. Comme des Garçons dates seasons by calendar year with the prefix AD, as in AD2017.
• Pleats Please. Issey Miyake’s pleated line, shown as a prototype in 1991 and launched in 1993. Essay
• A-POC. ‘A Piece of Cloth’: Miyake and Dai Fujiwara’s late-1990s method of making a garment in one tube of cloth.
• Bao Bao. The triangle-grid bag, a prototype in 2000 and an independent label from autumn/winter 2010.
• Mainline and diffusion. The principal collection versus the secondary line: Y’s and Y-3 for Yohji Yamamoto, Play for Comme des Garçons.
• Basara. Flamboyant, defiant display; the word Kansai Yamamoto gave his aesthetic.
• Hybrid. Two garments joined in one, the method of Sacai. Essay
• Archive piece. A garment from a designer’s historic seasons, collected for its place in the story.

Continue

• The Fashionista Bible
• A to Z Index
• Encyclopedia
• All collector guides

Spotted a garment you cannot place? Our Hunting Salon™ searches across Japan’s private collector circles on your behalf.